Nobody Drinks Alone
by ParadiseAvenger
Summary: The World of Infinity was a never-ending nightmare. Anguish and pain, suffering and blood, the game with its players, and finally alcohol... as if that would make it all better.
1. Syaoran, Kurogane, and Fai

I do not own Tsubasa or "Nobody Drinks Alone" by Keith Urban.

Hey all, I'd make this a music video, but I have no clue how so…

I guess this might take place in Infinity some time.

X X X

The grimy streets of Infinity were paved with his suffering. Even in Fei-Wang Reed's clutches, watching the girl he loved fall in love with a man-made image of him, loving her enough that he hoped the image grew its own heart and loved her in return, seeing the image suffering for loving her with his borrowed heart… It all had torn his apart, but he didn't think anything could hurt him more than those things. Little did he know that love was a double-edged sword.

For not being the image, for not being _him,_ Sakura hated him.

_**You brought that bottle home in a paper sack**_

So now, exhausted and bloody from the latest chess game, he dragged his beaten body into the apartment, took a cup from the spotless kitchen, and slumped down in one of the creaky kitchen chairs. Sighing with resignation, he produced the cold glass bottle from the cavity inside his shirt where he had been hiding it. For a moment, he stared at it on the cracked and stained table. Finally, with shaking hands, he picked it up.

The paper rustled almost accusingly as he slipped the bottle from it. The alcohol sloshed inside it as he screwed off the cap.

He had seen his image drink, had seen the blissful happiness that lasted for hours at night and the crippling pain of a hangover in the morning. He didn't care about the consequences of his actions right now. He just wanted to forget for a while, to feel nothing, especially not this pain.

_**Drew the blinds and locked the doors**_

In his dark depressing room, he shoved the bed against the door and pulled the greasy curtains closed over the big windows. He shut out the cameras, flipped on one dim electric lamp with the tattered shade, and slumped down on the bed. He listlessly dragged off his shoes and tossed them aside. Then, he unfastened the heavy buckles on his pants and let his jacket slide painfully from his battered shoulders.

In the dark pants and white bandages, he felt like a man trapped between two worlds. One part of him was black with agony, suffering, pain, blood, darkness… while the other was white with equal pain, salvation, love for the girl, trust, sincerity, hope…

_**And there's nothing but empty there inside that glass**_

His first taste of alcohol was sharp and bitter. For a moment, he coughed and sputtered, trying to figure out how people drank this stuff. Then, he felt the heat in his chest and the warmth dulled the edges of everything he was feeling like a soothing blanket. The pain in his back whispered away, the agony of breaks and cracks in his heart faded, the scent of blood vanished, the love for her felt perfect and beautiful.

_**So you pour a little more**_

Another glass pushed even the creaking of the bed and the smell of garbage from his senses. He felt dulled, trapped in a bubble where nothing could touch him. He was suddenly very aware of how quiet it was and the bliss of not hearing his own breath rattling in his chest further lulled him through his dreamlike haze.

_**And there's no one there to judge you**_

Fai was out with the Princess, shopping for clothes and food and bandages. Fai would pick up a fresh shirt for Syaoran's beaten frame and Sakura would think nothing of him. Kurogane was out looking for new weapons. He needed a replacement for the one he had been using and Fai's needed a new chain. Mokona was most likely hunkered inside the ninja's clothing as it had taken a certain displeasure to being around Sakura as much as it used to.

_**At least that's what you tell yourself, but…**_

He was alone in the apartment, just him and the bottle. He had another drink and then something strange started playing in his head, over and over, like a picture show.

_**Don't you know  
Nobody drinks alone?**_

Wordlessly, he closed his eyes and lay on his side on the bed. A small pained whimper crawled from his mouth and he wrapped his long arms tightly around himself. He felt his wounds pulling, hurting, and his body dying with him still inside it.

_**Every demon, every ghost**_

He felt Fei-Wang's eyes on him, destroying his freedom, his life, rending his love for Sakura into pieces until it was some twisted blackened thing. And then there was Sakura with her depressed disappointed jade-green eyes on him._****_

From your past

His parents sacrificing everything, their time with him, their lives, their own love, everything to put him with Sakura. There were the happy times he spent with her, his most precious memories, his comfort in the darkness.

_**And every memory you've held back**_

Every sacrifice he had made for the princess, for his love of her, for his desire to save her, for his guilt. His fingers tearing his own eye out to give to the image and Sakura's dispassionate eyes once she learned the truth and Fei-Wang using him like a pawn on a game board and how Sakura was using him like that now.

_**Follows you home**_

He looked up at his closed barricaded door.

Once the princess got home, it would be so easy for him to corner and demand that she see him for what he was. The image was a fraud, the fake, not him. He was the real Syaoran! He was the one that suffered both at her hands and for her. He had given up so much, lost so much, lived through so much agony.

He had done it all for her.

God, sometimes he really wanted to. He wanted to shake her, to hurt her, to make her see him.

He wanted her to lean into him, to touch him, to say his name, anything.

Whatever little scrap of affection she wished to give him, he would greedily take.

All he wanted was her.

_**Nobody drinks alone.**_

Just her…

He just needed her to love him, maybe just a little…

X X X

Fai laid their purchases on the scarred kitchen table and looked around the apartment. There were noises coming from Syaoran's dark room and the door was shut like a fortress. Without a word, Sakura limped passed it without so much as a passing glance and slipped into her own dark room.

So much had gone wrong since Tokyo.

Everything had fallen apart.

Fai touched his tongue to his vampire fangs and his long slender fingers to his empty socket.

_**You remember whiskey on your daddy's breath**_

He thought of his home world, where King Ashura laid sleeping, hopefully dreaming good dreams. Chi was watching over him and the king was still asleep.

For now, the wizard had little to worry about.

Except maybe blood and Sakura and Syaoran.

Sighing, Fai unpacked the groceries. Bread, milk, eggs, cheese, bacon, steaks, vegetables, this country's apples. Then, he reached it. Guiltily, when his hand brushed the warm bottle, he stashed it away in a cupboard.

_**So you always stick to wine**_

Wine was like blood, life blood, a vampire's feast. Shuddering, he poured himself a glass almost to the top. The liquid swirled as dark as any poison, as any black blood, around the glass. He traced his finger around the rim of it, watching the wine tremble like a small cornered animal. For a moment, he thought there was a broken bit of beating heart in the depths of his glass.

_**And you scared your little brother half to death**_

Secretly, maybe Yui was the bottom of every bottle.

_**You just kept it all inside**_

Immediately, Fai stepped away from the glass and finished putting away the rest of the groceries. He didn't look at the bloody wine again.

_**You can hear your mama cryin'**_

Crying, crying, sobbing. Praying that one of her babies would die in the early hours of their birth so that she had not borne twins. God, had she prayed for one of their deaths. _Take on, please. God, just take one. I don't care! Take them both! _She must have hated them even in her womb, feeling the calamity growing inside of her.

_**Only now she cries for you, and…**_

Now, in heaven or hell, he was sure she despaired over not having the courage to kill him herself. Then, maybe everyone would still be alive.

Surely she would choose to murder Fai instead of Yui. After all, Fai was the one who condemned his twin to death at Fei-Wang's hand.

The long fall, so long…_****_

Don't you know  
Nobody drinks alone?

Shaking his head at his own folly and weakness, Fai picked up the wine glass and took a long swallow. The burn of sharp fermented grapes on his tongue made his head spin and his mind dull. For once, he did not see the blood of his twin on his long white hands.

_**Every demon, every ghost**_

He was his own demon, tearing himself, his twin apart. Yui was just a shade, a ghost, of agony and anguish and anger and failure around his shoulders.

_**From your past**_

There was his praying, crying mother and his father stabbing himself through the face. The coppery hot fresh blood on Fai's lips.

_**And every memory you've held back**_

Fai's choice, his condemnation. Then, there were his happy loving memories of King Ashura and of the man turning into a monster and once again having the people he loved slaughtered. Fai was too weak to stop Ashura.

He had always been too weak.

_**Follows you home**_

Kurogane saw that in him and despised him for it. Fai had even been too weak to save his own life. Kurogane had done it for him, held him down while the vampire's venom seared through his entire body and his heart thundered in his ribcage.

_**Nobody drinks alone**_

Fai needed his strength. The strength of an unbroken heart, but it was grievously beyond his reach… as it had been since Yui's death.

He sat down at the table, put his face in his hands, and drank more bloody wine.

X X X

Kurogane returned to an empty apartment with the little creature Mokona curled up, asleep, inside his jacket. The magician was nowhere to be seen, the kid was shut up in his room, the princess was locked in hers.

Everyone was gone.

Who was he kidding?

They had all been gone since Tokyo._****_

Though you're lonely

Kurogane was the only one who hadn't lost something. The magician had lost something somewhere in his past. The kid had lost the princess, the princess had lost the kid. Mokona lost the love the five travelers had shared through trial after trial.

The breaking point had come.

Everyone was broken, falling apart.

_**Hey don't you let that feelin' fool ya**_

There was half a bottle of wine on the kitchen table and a red-tinted glass. It had sweated a big white ring on the already scarred table top.

_**Don't you know  
Nobody drinks alone?**_

Fishing Mokona from his pocket, Kurogane laid the little creature on the sofa and then picked up the bottle.

_**Every demon, every ghost**_

With no one there, he could drink directly from the bottle.

_**From your past**_

His mother, murdered by Fei-Wang. His father, murdered by Fei-Wang.

Kurogane would get his revenge and then he would go home to Japan, to Tomoyo.

_**And every memory you've held back**_

Only the thought of Tomoyo kept him sane anymore and he supposed there were some advantages to leaving your loved ones at home under the guard of Souma. He knew he would live and return to her and, he knew that with Souma watching over her, she would be fine as well.

_**Follows you home**_

Drinking from the bottle with Mokona in his lap, Kurogane was never as alone as the other three.

_**Nobody drinks alone**_

Nobody drinks alone…

X X X

After this is a little insert of Sakura's point of view. Check it out please.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	2. Sakura

This is just a different start to the one-shot previously shown. It's from Sakura's perspective instead of Syaoran's. I wanted to squeeze it into the actual story, but with the song and all, there was no room. So, here it is!

It's so special that it gets its own little chapter.

X X X

It had been raining, but no rainbow gleamed in the darkness. The sky was gun-metal grey and a cold wind blew, howling like something alive. The world smelled: trashy, grimy, dirty, like death and sorrow and pain. Cars screamed by on the deserted street below the grungy ash-colored apartment building.

She was coming home late, exhausted, face gaunt, grey, and drawn like that of a corpse. Clutching her coat closed to guard against the chill and ignoring the ribbons of her skirt at her legs, Sakura dragged herself into the disgusting place.

_**You brought that bottle home in a paper sack**_

She set the bag down on the wobbly table and pulled back a chair for herself. Groaning in anguish, she heaved her crippled leg onto the chair next to her and stared at the gleaming metal brace. Her leg looked thin and weak and sickly inside of it, lost to the brutal intensity of the metal and black cloth.

_**Drew the blinds and locked the doors**_

She limped the expanse of the ugly room, stepping over weak spots in the grubby floor. Kurogane, Fai, Mokona, and _that _Syaoran would be home soon, but she didn't care. She locked the door and drew the heavy greasy blinds.

Then, she went to Fai's spotless kitchen and got down a glass. She returned to the table, dragging her leg behind her in exhaustion. Dropping into the chair again, she poured the first shot of the burning alcohol and drank it in one clean hacking burning gulp.

_**And there's nothing but empty there inside that glass**_

For a moment, she stared at it, knowing that what she was doing was a bad idea, but she didn't care enough to stop.

_**So you pour a little more**_

Fill and drain. Fill and drain. Pour and sip. Pour and sip. Empty to full. Half-full, half-empty.

Her mind felt hazy and thick, slow as snow, as clotted blood spreading across both Syaorans' white chests.

Her jade-green eyes burned.

_**And there's no one there to judge you**_

She was so completely and totally alone here. Kurogane couldn't glower at her, Fai couldn't offer her comfort, Mokona wouldn't be cuddling against _that_ Syaoran on the sofa, _that_ Syaoran wouldn't be staring at her with those beautiful straight-forward amber eyes of his.

_**At least that's what you tell yourself, but…**_

So completely alone.

Tears burned in her eyes, threatened to spill. She couldn't feel her leg, her skin was tight and painful, her body felt too large for her soul. There was a sucking, gaping hole in her chest where her heart should have been.

_**Don't you know  
Nobody drinks alone?**_

God, she wanted her Syaoran back! That was all she wanted, just him.

_**Every demon, every ghost**_

He was her demon and her ghost. He was everything to her and now he was gone.

Gone!

Gone, gone, gone, gone!

Vanished.

Just poof.

_**From your past**_

She didn't remember why she needed him so much, why he was so precious to her. Yes, he was getting hurt and working so hard to restore her memories to her. He had to be more. He just had to be.

But she would never know now.

Never know, because he was gone!

_**And every memory you've held back**_

A clone, the word just was lost on her. How could he be fake? Was everything she felt for him fake, too? Was his dedication to her all farce?

A clone.

A clone…?

_**Follows you home**_

Sometimes, all she wanted was to go to this new Syaoran. She wanted to touch his face, feel his heartbeat, thread her fingers through his soft chocolate hair, breathe the scent of his skin. She wanted to find similarities between them.

She wanted to trust him, need him, as she had the clone of him.

_**Nobody drinks alone…**_

X X X

First, drop a review and let me know what you think! Are the characters way out of character? Does everybody hate everyone? Think I torture everyone way too much (but it's because he's so easy to be mean to, though there's no real happy ending in this story!)? Are permanently disgusted and can no longer even watch Tsubasa thanks to me? Loved it? Hated it? Are scared for life because of all the drinking? (Flames will be used to roast marshmallows and weenies!) Think I need to do more editing before I post chapters? Post to slow? Yada, yada, yada…

Also, please, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! The Breaking of Poisonwood by **Paradise Avenger**. (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected _this_. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The _Poisonwood_—)

Questions, comments, concerns?_****_


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